Tofig Yagublu on Political Motives behind His Arrest

Baku / 03.09.20 / Turan: A member of the National Council of Democratic Forces and the Musavat party, Tofig Yagublu, in his last word in court, said the day before that the trial was carried out with gross violations, to the point that his lawyers were not given the opportunity to make a closing speech ...

“I know that the verdict is ready and I will be jailed. Last year I was summoned to the Interior Ministry and the Prosecutor General's Office, where the first deputy heads of these departments threatened me with arrest if I did not stop criticizing the President,” he said.

The same thing happened after the rally on October 19, 2019, when an employee of the Department for Combating Banditry of the Ministry of Internal Affairs said that this was his “last chance”.

“You must stop political activity and leave the National Council. Otherwise, you will be arrested,” the Interior Ministry officer said.

Referring to the current court, Yagublu said the incident in which he is accused took place in a busy place - near the market, but the investigation did not provide a single video frame.

The version of the investigation is absolutely stupid: it follows from it that Yagublu, having hit the victim with a screwdriver, called the 102 Ministry of Internal Affairs service himself.

Eyewitnesses stated that they had seen damage to the victim's chest. However, how could they see it under the wool sweater? And the examination concluded that Yagublu allegedly broke the head of the victim.

Another absurdity is that the “victim” Elkhan Jabrailov, who is physically much stronger than Yagublu, could not take the screwdriver away from Yagublu, but his wife could.

Yagublu filmed what was happening on a mobile phone. However, the police forcefully pulled it out of his wife's hands. Subsequently, the phone was hacked and the contents deleted.

Yagublu said that the order for the arrest came personally from Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev.

During the speech, the judge Nariman Mehdiyev interrupted Yagublu's speech several times, and after the last sentence ordered to turn off the microphone and forbade Yagublu's speech.   -06D-